HaberinYeri.com website official Büyükçakır received a prison sentence on the grounds of a reader comment posted on the site. The comment referred to the statement that President Gül supposedly descended from an Armenian family. Büyükçakır will file a complaint.

Soon after the smoke from the suicide bombing in Taksim had dispersed, there was reason for yet another sigh of relief. The Kurdistan Workers? Party (PKK) declared that it had extended a cease-fire until June 2011, when national elections are expected to be held.

Freedom of religion is considered to be a fundamental human right. In 1807 Thomas Jefferson said, ?Among the inestimable of our blessings, also, is that … of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will.? It is also something that the European Union places great importance on, and those countries that are looking to join the club need to meet EU standards on this.

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SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE (Bilim ve Gelecek)
EDITOR AND WRITER HELD FOR 8 MONTHS

The President of Turkey calls for scientists and experts to return to their homeland. Yet editor and manager of one of Turkey?s major popular science periodicals, Science and the Future (Bilim ve Gelecek), also translator and writer Baha Okar, has been held in prison for 8 months, a victim of a specious operation that began last fall.

Living and working as usual with no mystery regarding his whereabouts among academics, intellectuals and publishers as required by his position with the periodical, Baha Okar was arrested on September 21, 2010, and since the 25th of September, 2010 has been held in prison illegally: the period for holding suspects until trial, as set by international agreements, has long since been violated. The first session of Okar?s trial has been set for August 11, 2011.

One of the reasons put forth for Baha Okar?s arrestation is that, according to one testimony, Okar had undergone (para-)military training in Northern Iraq. Yet during the dates given for the alleged training, Okar was in Turkey and working as usual. This fact is confirmed by many types of documented proof and a number of witnesses. It is also alleged that, according to entries in a diary found in his personal computer, Okar had been entertaining relations with one Sabriye Çağırıcı within the context of a political organization. In fact, Sabriye Çağırıcı had been Okar?s French teacher and had lost her life tragically, of cancer, 11 years earlier. The document in question had been published in book form by Science and the Future Publications in 2010, and is widely available. The text was found on Okar?s hard disk because it was his job to do technical preparation of the text for publishing. Relations within a political organization with an individual who had fallen to cancer 15 years ago and passed away 11 years ago! This one example should be sufficiently revelatory of how the criminal charges for this case have been prepared. Charges also include what is alleged to be conversations regarding a political organization, while the conversations in question had no such content whatsoever, having entirely to do with work and private life. We all regularly make such calls. If the logic of the criminal charges is upheld, it means all of us are guilty of maintaining relations with political organizations without realizing it!

If it is true that Turkey is indeed undergoing a transition to a more genuine democracy, then practical steps taken should conform to this trend. So it is sad that while the government speaks of democratization, it is at the same time carrying out fear and intimidation operations aimed at oppositional groups. While officials frequently claim that the juduciary is independent they are also legitimizing an ongoing injustice.

In recent times many individuals like Baha Okar are being arrested and jailed in spite of asserting their innocence. For both the imprisoned and their friends and families, these unjust arrests have the effect of sequestering their lives, of turning them into a source of constant torture.

We demand that science periodical editor and writer Baha Okar and those like him being held on the basis of spurious charges be released at once, that this overt injustice be brought to an end.